This Posting was first published on this website on Sept. 20, 2016.
The Wall Street Journal (9/23, Evans, Subscription Publication) reported that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Tom Frieden said that aerial spraying likely prevented a Zika outbreak in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood. According to Frieden, the combined use of insecticide and larvicide in aerial spraying was “a new tool and the strongest one” in mosquito control efforts.
The Miami Herald (9/23, Chang) reported that Frieden added, “We cannot know with certainty that the control measures ended transmission, and of course the virus could come back tomorrow. But the findings are clear. Despite extensive ground-based efforts, there remained large numbers of mosquitoes, and Zika continued to spread among people in the area. As soon as aerial spraying was done, mosquito populations plummeted and monitoring found no more people infected in the weeks after the aerial application.”
STAT (9/23, Branswell) reported that Frieden called the results in Wynwood “quite striking” and concludes that aerial spraying of insecticide and larvicide is a “one-two punch” that “has the ability to rapidly interrupt transmission.”
Lee County Mosquito Control District (LCMCD) has successfully kept imported mosquito borne viruses from getting into the local mosquito population for many years using surveillance, larviciding and adulticiding to prevent outbreaks. While LCMCD has not previously used aerial larvicide to control Aedes aegypti, it has the ability and will conduct aerial larvicide and aerial adulticide to prevent local transmission of Zika if needed.